Useful Sites (weekly)

•  Teaching Resources – Free Printables and Lesson Ideas for Teachers!  Website for general resources and lesson plans for teachers.

• Listorious: Discover the Best Twitter Lists Listerious offers browsing through popular twitter lists   

• Science Oxford Online This online resource from Science Oxford presents science news features with the aims of illustrating connections between different areas of science and demonstrating connections between science and everyday life. Users can submit articles and press releases. A newsletter, tweets and RSS feeds are available.   

•  Intelligent YouTube Channels | Open Culture youTube channels with educational content.    

• Edge Perspectives with John Hagel: Defining the Big Shift The Big Shift. We must master a new set of techniques required to access, attract and accumulate resources to unleash peer based learning in far more flexible ways than conventional push programs permit.   

• Citrify Photo Editor Citrify, is an easy to use photo editor with powerful features.  

• Roman Numerals The big differences between Roman and Arabic numerals (the ones we use today) are that Romans didn’t have a symbol for zero, and that numeral placement within a number can sometimes indicate subtraction rather than addition.    

• Evaluating Websites The Internet contains an immense range of information that is posted by individuals and organisations from around the world. There is no single body or organisation that ensures the quality of this information.    

• Bullying. No way! Bullying. No way! is developed and managed by all Australian education authorities for use by Australia’s Government, Catholic and Independent school communities. 

• Cyberbullying – digizen.org On this area of the Digizen website we outline the three major areas of the advice, Understanding, Preventing and Responding; and provided links to current resources.   

• CyberNetrix – Internet Safety Education for Secondary Schools Australian online safety site CyberNetrix offers computer-based activities that have been designed for secondary students from years seven to nine as a cross-curricula, cross-year level resource. There is a teacher guide and 11 downloadable student activities.      

• BBC – Newsbeat – Pupils ‘bypassing school internet security’ BBC article about the dangers of students using proxy servers.    

• High school: What students take versus what they need – Mind Dump   Interesting post        

• Official Google Blog: Safety Mode: giving you more control on YouTube  “Diversity of content is one of the great things about YouTube. But we know that some of you want a more controlled experience. That’s why we’re announcing Safety Mode, an opt-in setting that helps screen out potentially objectionable content that you may prefer not to see or don’t want others in your family to stumble across while enjoying YouTube ”        

• Twitlonger – When you talk too much for Twitter    Twitlonger is an easy way to post long messages to Twitter without the need to write a blog post. Write what you need here and we post the link to Twitter for you.        

• 20 Essential Tricks Every Skype User Should Know – Page 2 | Maximum PC    This article has tips and ideas on how to more effectively use the features of Skype.        

• The Lovett School: Lovett News    What do you get when you put digital cameras into the hands of Lower School mathematicians? Children who are engaged in the learning process, and students who see the variety of mathematical possibilities in the world around them.        

• Sorry I’m Late    Great example of stop motion animation. Watch through to the credits at the end to see how it was done. Quite brilliant!        

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Useful Links (weekly)

• Waller on the relationship between Google and public libraries In a research paper, Vivienne Waller from Swinburne has examined the relationship between Google and public libraries. It’s very well researched and written, and will provide anyone with plenty to think about. The challenge now is to get the right people to read it – especially the “everything’s there on the Web” crowd.

• Smarthistory: a multimedia web-book about art and art history This is a free multi-media web-resource/book designed as a dynamic enhancement for the traditional art history textbook. The authors decided to create a multi-media survey of art history web-book. They created audios and videos about works of art found in standard art history survey texts, organized the files stylistically and chronologically, and added text and still images.

• EyeWitness to History – history through the eyes of those who lived it This sie can help you to get a more personal perspective on history through this site. It is a site that would engage kids with first-hand accounts of historical events, photos, audio and more. 

• History Timelines on the Web … The History Beat If you need a timeline then this might be a usefule site.

• History Games and Animations This site offers a list of resources to find tools that will help you teach your students about everything historical from ancient times to the present day.

• ANYDAY Today-in-History PAGE of SCOPE SYSTEMS. Put in any day in the year and find out what major events happened on it through this helpful tool. This could be a good way to begin a class – by finding out what happened on today’s date that is significant.

• Clickable Mummy Kids are very often interested in mummies and using this interactive site they can learn about the process of mummification.

• Calaméo – Publish and share documents Upload all major file formats and convert them into online publications. Can be used to: -Create digital books, e-zines, etc. -Students can become “published” authors -Alternative strategy for reports and presentations -Develop and share tutorials, study guides, etc. -Embed projects into a class site, blog or wiki -Connect with others that share your interests 

• Tap Into The World Of Comics 

• Interactivate: Activities Interactive games. Maths – 2 player, individual, class activites. Teacher or pupils can pick level and which types of questions are asked in quiz. Time limit to challenge pupils. Element of competition. 

• Building Maker – Create 3D buildings online “Building Maker is a 3D modeling tool for adding buildings to Google Earth.”

• Flickriver – A new way to view Flickr photos and more… Offers one continuous stream. You can view thousands of photos without ever needing to hit ‘next’ and waiting for the next page to load!

• Visual Editors – The classroom for visual journalismThe non-profit that promotes visual journalism literacy in graphics, photo, video and design.

• 100 Blogs Every New Teacher Should Read | Online Schools An article on relevant teaching blogs 

• Thirty-Four Interesting Ways* to Use Search Engines in the Class Google docs resource. Lots of fabulous links to browse through when looking for ideas on information searching and using search engines.

• Free Online Graph Paper / Lined 

• Online tools – maths online Powerful collection of online tools. A good online function plotter (graphing calculator) is here.  

• Science Podcast Collection | Open Culture Many different science podcasts on Open Culture – the best free cultural and educational media on the web.

• Math Forum – Ask Dr. Math 

• Inclusive Science & Special Educational Needs Resources “A drawing resource for producing neat, accurate diagrams of experimental apparatus. Students who struggle to draw neat diagrams for assessments can be encouraged to use this resource to produce high quality results independently. Teachers may wish to use it to draw diagrams that can be used on worksheets.”

• The Steampunk Workshop | Technology and Romance – Sustainable Rebellion  Steampunk is a sub-genre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The site of Jake von Slatt. and it has some great posts and offers all sorts of interesting ideas and projects. Working in a school populated by teenage boys, it is a great site to get their attention. There are links to many things”steampunk”, from links to literature and reviews, projects, technical links , ephemera (that includes all manner of things that have caught the author’s attention) and even music.,

• Videoraptor – search, find and download free videos and music clips Videoraptor downloads videos directly from websites and it can also convert the files into the formats I need in order to be played on other music players, even on cellphones

• KeepVid: Download and save any video from Youtube, Dailymotion, Metacafe, iFilm and more! Another website that lets you download Youtube videos in high quality mp4 format besides flv.

• TubeLeecher.com ::: Download youtube videos directly to your computer TubeLeecher is a very simple website which lets you directly download youtube videos to your computer. You just have to copy paste the youtube video url in the download box and hit download.

• Valuable expertise on demand – rich business content and presentations | myBrainshark This is a useful way of hosting online presentations. Free to use, presentations such as powerpoints can be uploaded, narrated, saved, shared and embedded. Documents can be uploaded and narrated and photo albums can be made.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Useful Links (weekly)

• ToonsTunes – Making music fun for kids! A site aimed to attract kids that allows kids to create music, using loops of their own voice or anything that comes through their pc microphone. A wonderful site to send your kids where they can explore creating their own music. 

• Musipedia: Musipedia Melody Search Engine Welcome to Musipedia! Inspired by, but not affiliated with Wikipedia, we are building a searchable, editable, and expandable collection of tunes, melodies, and musical themes. Every entry can be edited by anybody. An entry can contain a bit of sheet music, a MIDI file, textual information about the work and the composer, and last but not least the Parsons Code, a rough description of the melodic contour.

• placeSpotting.com | The online map game | solve Place Spotting – Challenging Geographic Riddles: a fun way to teach or reinforce geography lessons Place Spotting is a website of geographic riddles. It is based on the Google Earth platform. Users can create their own geographic riddles or try to solve riddles created by others. The search feature on the site lets users search for riddles based on level of difficulty, language, region, or creation date.

• Online Teaching Tips Tips and tricks for designing course content, facilitating and teaching online, developing learning objectives, assessment ideas, and tutorials for Blackboard. Online Teaching Tips was designed and developed, and is maintained by the Dallas Baptist University Online Education department.

• 5 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With An Online School Calendar | School Calendars Made Simple 

• Vocab Quiz Maker | Scholastic Word Wizard | Scholastic.com A simple, but useful application – develop students understanding of vocabulary and grammar. It allows a teacher to generate a “mini-quiz” for any level.

• ‘Word up’ with fun, free and engaging vocabulary games – Digital Play 

• TrueTube Offers lots of resources to promote debate. Truetube explains itself as: “a free, website which uses real-life stories and issues to encourage teenagers to explore and debate the world of morality, ethics, politics and religion. TrueTube brings to life the Secondary Education subjects with short-form web-based video and multimedia technology. The site encourages teenagers to find their voice as they explore their own value systems and those of their peers around the corner and across the world.”

• Interactive Timelines 

• Top 10 Web Collaboration Tools (That Aren’t Google Wave) – Collaboration – Lifehacker This is a useful list of collaboration tools online (and not part of the Google Wave) Have a look at some great ways to work collaboratively and each option has its own strengths. This post will get you started thinking about may be possible.

• Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching The Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching (CIMT) was established in 1986. The centre is a focus for research and curriculum development in Mathematics teaching and learning. By clicking into ‘Teacher Resources’ you can find some interesting activities and resource materials. There are also exercises with automatic correction.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.